


celestial thieves

by keouil



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Kannabi Bridge Mission, Team Minato-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25826485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil
Summary: "i will be waiting for that billionth earth to come along again so i can find you, the way i have a billion times before."or, team minato gambles with the universe.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin & Uchiha Obito
Kudos: 24





	celestial thieves

**Author's Note:**

> _(i don't know where i went with this tbh all i know is that one day i woke up with a burning need to write kakaobirin because they are huge comfort characters to me and i hope with this you'll understand a little bit why)_

obito didn’t think himself a bad person.

truthfully, he would even go so far as to argue his moral compass was far more existent than most of his peers back home. _you’ll see, i’m actually the cream of the crop_ , he persists to a certain uchiha oligarch who regarded him with the usual indifference.

zetsu was no better. all he offered in return was a snide remark about that time he shadowed a certain konoha team on a particularly breezy c-rank escort mission turned rogue, having only barely made it out thanks to a white-haired prodigy.

he was about to go into the more mortifying details of said prodigy having to jump in not once, but _thrice_ , to his aid when the still-in-bandages kid makes a poor attempt of shutting him up by threats of violence.

he tunes them out after that and instead indulges himself in admiring the night scenery, offered by the only space in the entire cramped cave with enough gaps to resemble a humble make-shift window. he was mesmerised by the uncharacteristically liberated area enough he claimed authoritative ownership the moment he set his eyes on it, approximately a year ago since he was brought in.

on his tenants part, no arguments ensued. although he did hear the old man muttering something about uchiha belonging to the darkness and asking which diluted branch brat spawned this one again.

ignoring them like he's grown accustomed to, he admires the almost effervescent scene happening right outside his little stargazing corner. on particularly harsh nights when he forces himself to accept the reality of his situation, it was this very self-soothing ritual that he ground himself on. because while they may have taken most of his free will, he'll be damned if he lets them take his humanity.

 _the moon looks lonely,_ he observes. _hauntingly beautiful and damningly all-knowing, but lonely nonetheless._

* * *

rin thinks if she died today, nothing would be different tomorrow.

things in the hospital would remain relatively the same, although some intern would probably have the pre-meditated misfortune of getting the dead girl’s locker. she amuses herself on the thought of shizune, a fairly pretty but guarded lackey who stuck to tsunade like glue, having to deal with locker room assignments on top of already being guilt-tripped with most of the head doctor’s breeding paperwork.

death has never scared her.

it is the living and surviving and all the uncertainty that comes with it that she finds herself waking up in the middle of night, grief-stricken, for. as a medic, her philosophy on death has always been synonymous with finality. her mentors drilled into them that they would never be able to physically save all the wounded, and half their job is strategically choosing which ones have the most fighting chance the moment they come into their care.

however, as a kunoichi, she greets death in nostalgic comfort. for she has seen it harshly unfold in her own eyes, held shaking hands with it down to its last breath, and visits its tombstone every day with ⅓ of her former team without fail. in death, she connects and forms a bond with an old childhood friend in a way she never had a chance to alive.

 _eternal slumber is infinite and one of the universe's only certainties,_ she concludes. 

she notes all this in passing, surprised she wasn’t mildly appalled by the thought of taking her own life and other associated ways one could go. shinobi have gone out in much worse conditions, after all.

she stores that line of thought for another time. she also remembers she has that mission with kakashi next week - kirigakure, should be interesting, she’s never gone before.

as she gets ready to clock out for the night and winces at the time – rin takes a curious glance at the all-too-imposing moon that illuminated her tiny cub of an office in an almost ethereal, dewy dawn glow which made her regard it in all her intimidating glory.

 _the moon was shining bright that night too_ , she recalls. but she pushes the memory back into the depths of her mind reserved for friends who have gone ahead too soon and too painfully. 

shaking her head, she’s only half-stunned to realize she arrived at her destination. muscle memory and sentimental rituals allowed her the security to space out in her journey, because if there is anywhere in the entire universe she would and could go blindly – it would be here.

she’s not surprised to find out she isn’t alone.

* * *

contrary to popular belief, kakashi does think of himself every once in a while.

there have been rumours circling around the shinobi vine about a red-eyed demon child amongst anbu. _too young to have seen such horrors, white fang’s orphan,_ and the growing _what’s he hiding in that goddamn mask._ the last one was by far his favourite. for in spirit of full transparency, he did conceal himself purely for superficial reasons.

long before his father passed, he always minded his own physical attributes with disdain. he never understood the fatherly resemblance at all. in fact, every time he looked at himself in the mirror – it was his mother he saw.

as much as he’d like to believe he was too young to properly remember her ( _and he does, he tries every day to forget)_ – he wasn’t a genius born out of ignorance and for all his might, he could never beat himself out of remembering every single about his late mother. 

he remembers her soft voice, singing him to sleep as he desperately tried fighting drowsiness in hopes of waiting for his father to return home from a week-long mission. he remembers her soft smiles, and some particularly mischievous ones as she tried to sneak midnight sweets into his eager hands hidden beneath his blanket while winking, _it’ll be our little secret._

safe to say, every childhood memory he had has been omitted from ever making it past his lips. it’s not that he doesn’t like talking about her, it’s that he _absolutely can_ and he knows if he keeps going he’s not going to want to stop and remembering the dead has never been his strong suit.

selfishly, he didn’t want to be visually reminded of her and her voice and her smile every time he catched a reflection of himself, so he resorted to morphing into a faceless, mismatched body bag instead.

he comes out of his thoughts and turns his head when he hears a shuffling of feet approaching him. he knows who it is the moment she stepped on the graveyard, probably even long before she became aware of his own presence.

he sees her giving a small bow to the two tombstones beneath them before regarding him entirely. rin always did that, even though he swore he could only remember a single moment she even crossed paths with his father, and even then that was only when sensei insisted on meeting the parents of his newly-graduated genin team.

 _you’re late,_ he notes.

she seems amused by this, _coming from you?_

with that, he smiles and they both fall into a comfortable pace as they make their way to a more secluded part of the burial grounds. after all, he was still an uchiha and they always bury their own with dignity.

the moon paints his grave like a surrealist painting. only the realistically heartbreaking truth was that his beauty was short-lived and it is in their hushed apologies in his wake that prompts a bandaged boy a million miles away to answer back to the voidless sphere. 

_i miss you._

* * *

they were celestial thieves, prematurely plucked from a long list of unfated children born into lives of complete tragedy. if there was indeed a divine being, it was the cruelest puppeteer they have ever seen. twisting their delicate strings and dancing them with death far too often than normal because no one should know of passing as intimately as they did.

maybe it is the same moon each one of them sees every night that intimidated them into submission. maybe it is her very being that decided to play a cruel hand of cards rigged to make three lose every single time.

red, gray, and brown looking at blue with such hope and hurt and pain and love and _death_ , most of all _death_ \- that she thought to herself only divine intervention itself could match the intensity of their suffering.

because in truth, three children disguised as adults wished on stars that never fell and prayed to deities who never listened. cosmic alignment and any other otherworldly medium they helplessly cling to for reprieve of their lives are ill-fated, for pre-destined tragedy has long been written and impossible to unwrite. almost as if their running tragedy was an inside joke, a cruel mismatch, and a gamble of lives between the gods themselves.

but despite it all, they have hope.

they yearn and dream and weep and grieve and wish and pray because it is all they can do.

until maybe, just maybe, one day they will live this life the same way they have always did before - only this time there is no war and there are no child soldiers or demon foxes or vengeful ancestors or _stupid fucking bridges._

there is only an ambitious boy, a masked genius, and a civilian with quiet strength. and they will find each other, just as they have a billion times before in billion earths, 

_and maybe this time they will get it right._


End file.
